Amazon is in talks to buy Decart for about $7 billion, weeks after Anthropic walked away

A $7 billion AI startup has had three suitors in three months. The latest is Amazon.

Amazon is in negotiations to acquire Decart, an artificial intelligence startup, in a deal that could be valued at around $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Journal said the purchase could be wrapped up soon if talks do not collapse or another suitor does not emerge. Amazon has not confirmed the talks.

Amazon shares were slightly higher in early premarket trading after the report. The stock closed Friday at $262.43, up 3.29%.

A sale process with an unusual cast

Decart's path to this point has been unusually fluid. According to reports, Nvidia was the first to pursue an acquisition. Anthropic then emerged as the preferred bidder in August and explored a deal worth about $6 billion, Bloomberg News reported. In September, after conducting due diligence, Anthropic decided not to go ahead.

That left the door open for Amazon, which already had a working relationship with the company. Amazon Web Services is a strategic customer of Decart, and according to the Journal, AWS gave the startup early access to its Trainium3 AI chip in 2025 after being impressed by its founders.

What Decart does

Decart, founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, is known for its Lucy model, which can edit live video in real time. It has also built software that helps developers run AI workloads efficiently across different kinds of chips.

That second capability is the part most commentators connected to Amazon's interest. Nvidia's graphics processors dominate AI computing, and Amazon has been developing its own Trainium processors as an alternative for customers training and running models on AWS. Software that makes it easier to move AI work onto non-Nvidia hardware could make Amazon's chips more attractive to cloud customers, particularly those trying to manage computing costs or reduce their dependence on a single supplier.

An acquisition would also give Amazon direct control of technology that has already been tested on its own hardware, rather than relying on a partner.

The price: well above the last round

The reported $7 billion figure is a substantial premium to Decart's most recent valuation. In May, the company raised $300 million at a valuation of about $4 billion, in a round led by Radical Ventures that also included Nvidia. Reports put the total it has raised at more than $400 million, from investors including Sequoia Capital and Benchmark.

At the reported price, the deal would rank among Amazon's larger acquisitions and would be another sign of how much large technology companies are willing to pay for small teams with specialized AI technology.

Why it matters beyond Amazon

The talks fit a pattern that has defined the AI trade this year: the biggest cloud providers are spending heavily not only on data centers and chips, but on the software that decides how efficiently those chips are used. Every point of efficiency translates into capacity that can be sold to customers.

The sequence of bidders is also telling. A chipmaker, an AI lab and a cloud provider all looked at the same company within a few months. That suggests the tools for running AI across different chips are becoming strategic for every layer of the industry, not just for chip designers.

There are still open questions. The Journal's report describes negotiations, not a signed agreement, and large technology acquisitions can draw regulatory review. Anthropic's decision to walk away after due diligence is a reminder that not every look at a company ends in a deal.

What to watch

Whether Amazon and Decart announce an agreement, and on what terms. The broader AI infrastructure picture will also get a fresh test this week, when TSMC reports third-quarter results early Thursday and ASML reports on Wednesday, both widely read as gauges of demand for AI chips.